


Ed is wasted

by RevolutionVoltage



Category: Ed Sheeran (Musician), Taylor Swift (Musician)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 19:04:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2662922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevolutionVoltage/pseuds/RevolutionVoltage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed is drunk. Nick is talking about how beautiful and blue the sea of Tenerife is and it doesn't help him to clear his mind from that girl and that night.<br/>Thankfully, Harry is a good friend and knows when handing him his guitar and when to shut up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ed is wasted

Ed is wasted.  Probably he has never been this wasted before. 

 If he tries to get up from the settee his head turns, but it’s okay, maybe it’s because of the countless number of beers that Harry keeps on putting in front of him on the table.  He’s also very very tired.   Nick has been blathering since hours.  He and Greg have joined Ed and Harry in Los Angeles in the morning and they are now in the same hotel room since what it seems ages.

 In fact, Ed is not so sure about how much time has really passed.  

However, someone must have called the room service because Nick has a dish in one hand and he gesticulates with the fork, «You should’ve been there: the sand of the beach is so fine, the clubs are full of people: boys, girls, all together, midnight swims and the sea, God, you have no idea of the colour of that sea.»  Harry laughs holding his stomach.   Greg hits him with the back of his hand. 

 Ed can’t understand how they have all this energy, he just wants to become a whole with the settee.  

«Spain» Nick goes on with his monologue «should be one of the Seven Wonders of the World. I can’t say the same about Spanish People anyway.» 

  «There are way better places,» Harry contradicts him. «And you’re mean,» he adds, but he got ignored on this point. 

  «No, it’s the truth,» Nick snaps back. He takes Greg’s phone from the pocket of Greg’s trousers and searches for something, «Have you ever seen something like this?»   Nick puts the phone at 10 centimetres from Harry’s nose, Harry’s still laughing. 

 Their hands touched lightly when Harry grabs the phone to move it away from his eyes and bring it into focus.   Nick swallows, keeps the grip still for a couple of seconds then lowers the gaze and pulls back the hand.  Harry thinks, looking at the picture.  

Ed doesn’t know why he notices all these details now, he’s always been good at ignoring Nick and his dramas about Harry, all not to complicate his position the few times they hang out together, but everything seems a little slower.  Harry blathers something about the light, the bottom of the sea, the colour of the sky; typical Harry things.   He hands the phone to Ed, along with his half glass of beer.  

Ed shouldn’t drink again, but he does.  Then, while watching absent-mindedly the picture, he figures out it’s better if he cuts it out.   He leans to the seatback of the settee, sighs and looks at the screen, first he watches it with a vacant stare and God, he feels so slow and tired.  

 Then he understands: he feels slow, tired and sad.  The sea is beautiful. Whatever Harry had blathered about the light it’s surely true, if Ed was just able to understand, but there’s something in that blue… Something which makes him upset.  Something he has seen before. 

 «I don’t understand how you can have time to read, with the tour and everything. How many hours you get to sleep at night?»  Harry shakes his head. 

«Enough, we have plenty of time during the travels.»   They have definitely changed subject. 

  «Where?» said Ed without taking his eyes off the phone. 

  «Sorry?» asks Nick, shocked that Ed’s not following the conversation.   

«Where’s this place?» Ed lifts his head, pointing at the phone with the chin. 

  «Tenerife.» answers Greg, reaching out to check what photo he’s talking about. «It’s an island in Spain, in the Atlantic Ocean..» he starts to explain. 

 Ed is not listening, that blue irritates him.    

                                                                                       ***

Ed wakes up a couple of hours later, he can’t tell exactly how many hours because he has no idea at what time he fell asleep. He feels less tired now, but not less sad, or less wasted.

  He’s still on the settee. Harry is in bed.  Someone has laid a light blanket on him, but it’s February and even though he’s in Los Angeles, it’s not warm enough.  Luckily, there’s no trace of Nick and Greg, finally there’s silence. 

Ed is sure to hear the sound of his beating heart and probably for a while he’ll avoid weed, and beer, or Harry. 

  When he decides to stand up everything turns around him, he grabs the sweater from the chair where he left it and he comes back to the settee, to safety.  In the pocket, he finds his phone which informs him that it’s 4 a.m.  He scrolls the notifications, reads the names of the people who have written to him on Twitter, skips Stuart’s texts, ignores Instagram and he’s a bit disappointed when he finds no other messages.  

He doesn’t realize that he hoped for that until the evidence hits him: Taylor didn’t send him any texts.  The Grammy’s ceremony is over since over 24 hours and still he hasn’t received any messages, he thought he deserved it.

 Taylor didn’t write and the Tenerife Sea looks absurdly like the colour of Taylor’s eyes.

 Ed is probably still drunk, more than expected if he does this kind of mental associations, but he figures it out right when his eyes fell down on that picture, he was trying to not to think about it.

 Ed wants to go to Spain now, if he had the energy he’d book a flight straight away with his phone.  

Ed would like to be able to stare at that colour for hours without being splashed on some gossip magazines or without frightening Taylor.  Maybe he asks for too much.  After all, he is already in the gossip magazines, he does not have a problem being talked about one more time.  It would be the first time that they would actually guess the truth though. 

 But maybe it would be a problem for her: more questions, more articles, more people talking about their relationship, someone would have spoken about betrayals, someone would have showed statistics about how Taylor lately is fond on British guys – as if Taylor and Harry had actually been together -.  No, he can’t do it to her.  

He can’t do it to her and to his own pride.   

 

As if he hadn’t heard the journalist woman behind the barrier asking questions about her private life and Taylor, on the red carpet, ready to answer, to deny.  «So, what’s up with you and Ed Sheeran?»   

«Nothing, absolutely nothing. He’s just a close friend. Sometimes we write songs together, he gives me some musical advice. He’s a great artist.» And she turned around to look for him, knowing that he was some metres from her.  She smiled at him, with lips and eyes.  A happy gaze, full of allusions, as if no one knew about them but them. 

Ed had been dazzled and stunned.  He smiled back at her, because he was obviously looking at her.  He couldn’t help it, she was beautiful.

  «Yeah, alright, but..let’s be honest. He’s cute and, after your passionate affair with Harry, it seems you get the British charm now.» 

  «No, really. It will never happen.» Taylor cut it off. And now she wasn’t smiling like before.  «I have to go now. Have a nice evening.»  

Ed had posed for some pictures, signed a couple of autographs, but he hadn’t stopped to talk with anybody.  Not that the journalists were queuing to know something about his love life.  

He turned around to look for Taylor, finding her taking a photo with some fans, she was smiling again.  He had approached and admired her from the distance: the straight hair undone falling on one shoulder, letting uncovered a side of the neck and a white dress which highlighted the colour of the eyes, an intense blue.

 She had waved at the fans and approached him until, once in front of him, she smiled and then sighed «I’m fed up with all their questions, they’re all asking about the same things. Do they know that I also write music? They could ask me about the new album.» 

«You don’t want to give information about the new album.» Ed reminded to her, still understanding how she was feeling.  

She looked at him, quite amused, tilting her head slightly, and then she had burst into laughing and, Ed could swear it, if he had died right in that moment he would still have been satisfied because he would have been dying with the image of her sincere smile before him, because the last thing he would have seen would be the blue of her eyes, vivid and serene.  «Let’s go?» she asked, taking Ed by the arm.  

«You shouldn’t stay so close to me» he tried to joke «Your high heels are way too high, I feel really small.» 

But he had that «It will never happen.» in mind.  

 

Like in this moment, on the settee, hours later.  Staring at the phone, waiting for a _‘What about hanging out for a couple of days together for like, the rest of our lives?’_   

And no, now it’s better that he puts away the phone, before writing some bullshit that he’ll regret for ever.

  He listens to Harry’s regular breath and a better idea than auto-commiseration comes to his mind.  

He gets up, and looks that the room now is not turning around him as much as before, he grabs the rucksack and pulls out a pencil and a notebook. 

He tightens his sweater around the neck and goes out on the balcony of the hotel room.  Under him, Los Angeles is lighted up to more than an hour to the sunrise, but he still feels as if he’s under the reflectors on the red carpet.

 He sits down and writes. 

 

 He hears the windows opening behind him. 

The sun has been up for hours, but he is still in the same position.  He has the song lyrics in front of him, copied on the final copy.

 Harry looks at him, understands, and when he comes back he has a guitar in his hands.  

He sits in front of Ed and plucks two chords, then he stops trying to recall the notes of what Ed is sure is Little Things.  

He gives up and hands the guitar to Ed, reaching out to read the lyrics.  

«You alright, man?» he asks honestly worried.  

Ed nods and starts to play, stopping and starting again more times to change notes and scribble them on the notebook.  Harry looks at him, and interrupts.  

He says, «Ed, who’s Beth?» when Ed puts down the guitar and grabs his head still heavy between his hands.  

«What?» he asks, he doesn’t understand.  Harry points the index on the last verse, _‘And in a moment, I knew you, Beth’_ he recites.

  Ed sighs, ‘Taylor doesn’t fit’ he could say. Harry is his friend, he wouldn’t tell anyone.  «For the metrics. She’s nobody.» he just mutters instead.  

Harry looks at Ed as if he’s studying him, for some minutes he stays in silence then «It’s beautiful» he says to him. 

                                                                                            *** 

 

Taylor knows it. 

As soon as she watches Ed’s video of the new song, she listens to it and she knows it.  

She searched for the lyrics on Google anyway, someone has already posted it.  But she prefers Ed’s voice while he sings it.  

_«I wrote this song after the Grammy's… I was in a situation at the Grammy's and everything was kind of happening at once. There was a lot of people around and they were talking a lot, a lot of shit. And I found out that the only sense that was coming out of anyone’s lips was from this one person… and I wrote a song about it. I hope you enjoy it.»_

  He says right before singing.  

Taylor remembers that night.  Ed was shaken, she thought because of the ceremony, but no, he was shaken also after it.  

She didn’t understand.  She had let it go, she didn’t give it enough importance.  She had acted exactly as she was thinking at the moment 'You want say to your best friend that you’d like to stay with him, but you cannot because you’re too afraid of losing him.'  

Wrong move.  

But Taylor watched the video and she knows: she just postponed, she just wasted time.  It must happen with Ed. 

If he just feels half the love she feels for him, they wouldn’t have to worry.  

She opens Google and searches for one last thing:  Ed’s eyes too, when he looks at her, are the same colours as the Tenerife Sea. 


End file.
